


A Better Man

by Jemppu



Series: Honey Mushroom [44]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Art, Culmets - Freeform, Fanart, M/M, Tumblr, honey mushroom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23837836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemppu/pseuds/Jemppu
Summary: Part of"Honey Mushroom"series of illustrated Culmets momentslisted here on tumblr.Paul after Hugh, at his weakest, alone and broken. Mean language and heavy drinking.Taking place during the time that would’ve been Discovery’s return to Earth, which got jump cut to Paris in the last episode of season 1.With illustrations.
Relationships: Hugh Culber/Paul Stamets
Series: Honey Mushroom [44]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1080993
Kudos: 12





	A Better Man

**Author's Note:**

> The series gets released quite out of order, as inspiration dictates, so I urge you to check out the [series list on tumblr](https://tinyurl.com/honeyshroom) for a better picture of the whole.

## 

## A Better Man _  
_

_Honey? Are you drunk?”_

A delightful, relieved curiosity filled Paul’s mind momentarily as he peered into the darkness of the room wide-eyed, to see where the gentle, familiar voice calling him out was coming from.

Then he remembered, and with a loud, derisive scoff sank back into his darkened state of mind, slumping back down on the couch.

“So fucking **what**!? If I am”, he garbled in a loud, demeaning voice, “don’t you fucking **dare** show up! I don’t fucking want to hear another fucking ‘word of reason’!”

“You can go to hell with your fucking wisdoms”. Paul had had quite enough wise words from beyond, or where ever the fuck this Hugh was coming from. From his own sorry mind, trying to make peace with things? Enough of that bullshit.

Also, Hugh didn’t need to witness him like this. This… this fucking broken.

Paul made a mean drunk. This was something Hugh should know. From the very first time they had met. Paul didn’t drink to get jolly. If he drank, he drank to numb his pain.

He hadn’t though, not since that first time he made an ass of himself in front of Hugh. Had he? Not like this. Frankly, there hadn’t been the need. For a brief moment in his sorry life he had been blessed. Unlike ever before. Likely unlike ever again.

“This is how it should’ve always been, isn’t it”, Paul grumbled loudly in a deeply contemptuous manner, gesturing with his hand madly into the dark room “how it **would** ’ve always been”.

Had Paul never met Hugh.

Or had he been stationed on this fucking Starcruise alone, like first intended. This is how he would’ve ended up, sooner than later, wasn’t it? Yes! Completely fucking alone, with a fucking bottle, and not one fuck to give about **fuck all** \- about anything or anyone!

And it would have been better too. He should’ve just left Hugh behind. It would’ve been far better than what was true now. But his selfish ass just couldn’t allow that, could it?

He knew Hugh would disagree, but he didn’t need to hear any more of it.

Paul took another gulp, emptying his glass. Again. 

“Computer”, he spoke to the room, with tones of annoyance. This to hide the misery in his own voice from himself perhaps, “play the one I hate”.

A command he had one sleepless night programmed into the room computer system. Something to tinker with while Hugh had been on a night shift and he left alone waiting, too tired to work, too awake to fall back asleep after he had awoken to the man’s departure.

It wasn’t the only one such command of course. Only implemented as a cheeky afterthought for the actual command he had created for _“the one he loves”_.

 _“Playing, Kasseelian Opera / The Bloom of Kasseel”_ , the computer announced, as the room filled with clear serenity of a sorrowful female voice.

Why did the melancholy crap sound almost bearable now? Comforting even. Just like it had felt there, when he heard it in the network.

Paul reached for a bottle to pour himself another drink. Were there any of the stronger stuff left still? All that fruity crap really didn’t serve any purpose. Idea, which he could well relate to at the moment. 

Paul didn’t drink recreationally. If ever he had, it was under social pressure - in gatherings where such a thing would’ve been expected. And there wasn’t a whole lot of those he would’ve attended voluntarily.

If he did, Paul drank in a more self-destructive manner. A fact, which Justin had often remarked about.

This was to sedate his mind when ever he had lost his inspiration, which ordinarily kept the mind busy, and protected him from the harshness of reality. That reality would come flooding in, if he didn’t occupy his head with ambitious things.

The ugly truth his mind insisted upon, which was not the fact, that he - just as any self-thinking fucking creature in existence - was alone with themselves. That, he thought, he had long accepted. But the fact that they were supposedly all largely without a purpose as well. That Paul refused to swallow. Every living creature, thing, had something to contribute to the universal whole by simply existing. And Paul had always aspired to have that, above anything else, some worth.

But now, that all his inspiration had been drained, this was all true of Paul: without his project, his existence seemed like it had no fucking meaning. His purposefulness stripped to bare minimum. And having been fucking foolish enough to surrender to the fleeting comfort of a companionship after all, and then lost it, he was now feeling fucking lonely as well, lonely as hell. More so than he ever had before.

Without his Love he was weak.

Now, that all that had been better in his life had been taken away in one swell swoop? It would be so fucking easy for **this** to become a habit. What would it matter at all anymore, now that he had nothing to lose?

Wasn't having nothing to lose supposed to make you stronger? Was this another test to see if he would survive long enough for that to became true?

“Hah!” Paul sneered, waving his hand dismissively into nothing, “lucky I have all these fucking missed opportunities to keep me company now!”

One couldn’t usually get this much to drink anywhere on a Federation ship, no matter what one’s rank. The crew’s allotted rations simply wouldn’t allow such amounts to be replicated.

These drinks had accumulated into their cabinets one after another, over a period of time, and were something quite unfortunate, and in on themselves worth drowning oneself in sorrow: these fucking bottles were the leftovers from all those fucking times Paul had blown off Hugh’s invitations to let go of his fucking work and come enjoy his time with Dear Doctor.

These were the very fucking drinks Hugh had replicated for their supposed relaxed evening get-togethers. Which, thanks to Paul’s fucking inconsideration and lack of fucking respect for his man over his precious work - his fucking supposed purpose - had hardly ever taken place.

Tangible reminders of his inability to realize he had had something better than the work, for once in his sorry life.

“Serves me fucking right!” Paul sneered mad, almost yelling, his hand waving madly as he spoke, sloshing the drink in his hand, “serves me fucking right I now have only these fucking leftovers left of you!”

“Serves me fucking right”, he dropped his hand next to himself and slumped deeper still on the couch.

His madly furrowed brows almost completely turned around then, in desperate anguish, as yet another pout of hopelessness hit him hard. His eyes below the distressed brows filling with tears again. Fuck.

Why exactly had he forced himself to come here now, after all? Back into their room - their first fucking home together. Wasn’t he doing just fine, staying in that small temporary cabin assigned to him? Next to his 'dear Engineering’. “Hah!” he sneered at his thoughts again, couple of tears pouring over, rolling across his anguished, self-deprecating smirk. Served him fucking right.

They had just ended the fucking Klingon War, or prevented it from ever happening - depending on how the fuck you chose to look at it. For him, however, nothing had been undone. He was still left alone. All he had had, was still lost all the same.

They were heading home now - or what ever the fuck Earth was anymore. And they weren’t fucking jumping either. Not after Ambassador Fucker Sarek’s remarks in that one fucking war planning meeting of theirs, and the mess of a Command they had aboard following the Fuck Fleets order’s to eventually lock up Paul’s research. His fucking life’s work.

Only few more days and they’d reach the Earth. Fucking Warp would take care of that. Yeah, where the fuck did they need one fucked up Spore Drive engineer anymore, in a ship without a fucking Spore Drive to use. He could just as well lock himself up here, drink himself unconscious and wake up, when they were there. If fucking wake up at all. Why the fuck would he care to anymore.

He could sense Justin laughing pitifully at his pout of self-pity from somewhere beyond just then.

“I didn’t care to be a fucking starship engineer in the first place. What the fuck do I know of tending to their fucking tin can!”

But why was this suddenly the saddest he had ever been during all of this madness? Or was this _“maddest during his sadness”_? The idleness must’ve finally gotten to him. See? There was a reason to keep working till exhaustion.

A great fucking reason.

He’d finally get to go back to Earth. After years of living on the Deneva Station facility for the research, and then on fucking Discovery - still for the fucking research - he’d now be free to come back to Earth and go be where ever the fuck he wished. Like he had dreamed for a while now.

Only now he had nothing left to come back for. Why was he going there again? It hadn’t been his home for ages. What was? If he had nothing - no-one - to bring with him, nothing was.

He could go anywhere. Yet nowhere seemed relevant.

“They are fucking right too!” Paul was suddenly yelling out, agitated. The desperation shifting back to his _“defensive dickishness”_ again. Like Dear Doctor used to call it. “They are fucking right to keep me away from that fucking machine and out of that fucking glass cage!”

“I’d fucking drive them to the farthest end of the fucking cosmos and dumb all of their sorry, badges wearing, ranks toting asses there! See how the fuck they like it, being stripped of everything they have!”

“I’d fucking jump back to you! And there’d be no fucking pointy eared fuck in a tunic or their fucking smart-ass off-spring with their superior wisdoms to tell me otherwise!”

A muffled knock on a wall sounded from somewhere outside the room. It was a well known thing, that any louder noises carried through between the neighboring cabins here, via ventilation tubes. Fuck if Paul cared right now, but he did calm down a bit, getting caught up in series of painfully fond memories the reminder brought from the previous times such knocks had heeded them to keep it down here.

“Yeah”, Paul quickly brushed aside the poisonously sweet recollections, not wishing to summon Hugh into his addled mind, or to re-live what he knew now gone, “they better fucking take it all away”.

“Take away my years of research! Yeah, fuckers! Why don’t you!” he instead kept on spitting out his frustrations as they came, “Like I had anything else fucking left anymore!!” “Take it all! Every fucking last bit of what I had!" 

"All of it is Star Fucking Fleet’s property to take!”

Justin, his kids, Stella, their research, the fruits it had bore.

“Yeah, Justin! Because of you fucking insisting we jump in bed with these Fleet fuckers!” “Look how well that turned out for you!”

Hugh.

Hadn’t the doctor too always been Starfleet’s property as well?

“Fuck, if I deserve any of it anyway”, Paul’s mood shifted back to despair again, “because of what I fucking did to you”.

Didn’t do.

Hugh had only ever asked for one thing of Paul: that he’d be present. And he couldn’t even fucking do that.

The man had given him everything, yet, Paul couldn’t even just be there for him when needed. Every once in a while. No matter how easy Hugh had made it for him.

“Hugh?” Was the man out there still, listening?

“I had this terrible dream last night”, Paul suddenly remembered, “almost as if a recollection. That I did something to you. Something bad”.

That was the real reason for his current madness, wasn’t it? That, which had prompted Paul to leave the relative comfort of his 'hideout’ detached of memories and come back here in search of answers. Even though he knew nothing but misery could be found here. The dream - that recollection had gotten him quite out of shape.

“Why? I remember I did something to you. In my frenzy”, as carefully as he approached the memory he couldn’t hold back the tears. “Did I…? Did I hit you?”

Out came the sobs. Fuck it all! He had, hadn’t he? Did he now have this to add to all of his other misgivings? Perhaps misery was exactly what he had came here for. What he damn well deserved.

Was that the last memory Hugh had of him? The last touch from his Honey Mushroom? A strike.

“You must know that wasn’t me”, Paul barely managed through his sobbing, “That I would never…”

No. Paul stopped himself. Fuck, if he had any fucking right to expect anything from Hugh after that. A sudden derisive scoff calmed his sobs. Damn, he sounded like any sorry-ass abusive partner ever.

He sat in silence for a good while. Wiping his tears. Feeling an utter fool for them - undeserving of them. For what he had done, he had no fucking right to feel sorry for himself.

He sat up from his slumped position and reached for the bottle on the table next to him. Sharp cling from the glass, and couple more from the glass table, as he poured another bottle empty and sat back again with an almost relieved sigh.

He sat there another while, his mind running blissfully empty, only concentrating on taking the occasional sip. There wasn’t even any buzz anymore, he was well beyond that already, too numb to feel any effect apart from the comforting familiarity of the repeated sensation of the glass on his lips and the drink going down.

“Love?” Paul then finally called into the dark room, once feeling collected enough again - or what passed as 'collected’ judged by a man in his level of intoxication, “Dear, are you still there?”

But he couldn’t hear Hugh. In fact, it was as if the man wasn’t there at all anymore - silent or otherwise. Made only sense: no self-respecting man would stick around to see their fucker of a partner willingly sink this low, or to hear their sorry drunken wailing.

No, better Dear Doctor not see him like this. Hugh deserved something far better.

And fuck, if Paul deserved anything. Other than this sorry state he was in. Fuck, if he had ever deserved anything as perfect as Hugh. Fuck, if he even deserved to be the man Hugh had shown him he could be.

He didn’t fucking deserve to be a better man. So, why try?

_“Try not to drown yourself while I’m gone”.  
“No promises”._

\- An exchange between Straal and Stamets, Star Trek Discovery Annual 2018

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts on the work posted along with the illustration on [**tumblr**](https://jmalkki.tumblr.com/post/182252447164/a-better-man-while-waiting-for-the-brain-to).
> 
> _Likes, shares, comments and what have you, all appreciated on:_  
>  _[ **tumblr**](http://jmalkki.tumblr.com/) | [**twitter**](https://twitter.com/Jemppu) | [**instagram**](https://www.instagram.com/jeminamalkki/) | [**DeviantArt**](https://www.deviantart.com/jemppu)_


End file.
